The National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions is located in the Lower Kasbah of Algiers on 9 rue Mohamed Akli Malik, in the former Friday market, in relation to the bird market organized at the end of the week, on an area of 595 square meters.
The museum retains a collection of important artifacts that are considered a link between traditional industries of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century and witnessed the activities practiced by families inheriting the secret of this generation after generation of the industry.
In the museum, there are paintings bearing the signatures of the greatest professors in the field of traditional industries that have marked the Algerian folk art.
There are many famous craftsmen in folk art and traditional industry like: Bkhosh fishing larger weavers of the Khenchela region, painter Bouakaz on wood, ZULU professor of copper engraving.
The construction of the museum is a palace built around 1560-1570, according to some references of Yahia Reiss, officer of the Algerian navy at the time Ottoman. There are other references to Ahbus telling us that Mustafa Pasha (Secretary of the Treasury when the parents Mohammed bin Othman) bought the palace and some small houses nearby, and gave him to his daughter Khaddaoj, there is a legend tells that this last Thadigaha frequents in the mirror, admires their beauty lost sight and this palace called his name “Khaddaoj Blind Palace”, and the references written in the French period refer to “House Bakri” the name of the owner to the time knew several minor administrative functions, the task of which it became in 1947 the center of traditional industries, to highlight the work of Algerian artisans, and this is to create a museum was opened in 1961 was continued in 1962 , the Ministry of Light Industries.It has become a national museum of artistic and popular traditions, affiliated to the Ministry of Culture and financially independent. n 1987.
